by Rob Thomas
“What’s she doing here?”
She turned to see Sheriff Dan Lamb staring at her through his half-open door. Petra Landros sat across from him, her long legs crossed, an impatient grimace on her face. Veronica exchanged glances with Norris, then stepped inside. Lamb’s office was dim and wood paneled, with a map of the states on one wall and an American flag in the corner.
She smiled sweetly. “Nice press appearance last week. Your hair looked great.”
They stared at each other across the desk. Logan had once told Veronica she didn’t have any flight—just way too much fight for her own good. Now she felt her hackles rising as she looked at Lamb. At his smug leer; at the way he leaned back in his chair like a toad on a choice lily pad, just waiting for nice fat flies to fall in his mouth. He was in his early forties, tall and fit, with the mildly fussy air of a man vain about his looks. His face was boyish, with a wide, sullen mouth and round cheeks, and he wore his hair in a sleek mane around his ears. Most unsettling were his eyes—the same bright blue as his dead younger brother’s.
Don Lamb had been lazy and inept, a bureaucratic tool, and Dan wasn’t much better. He allied himself with the powerful and preyed upon the weak. She had reason to believe he was strategically redistributing evidence—just two months earlier a Glock 9 mm had been planted on her friend Weevil Navarro’s unconscious body after Duncan’s mom, Celeste, shot him, and while she couldn’t prove it yet, she was almost certain the sheriff—or one of his cronies—had planted it on him. And according to public defender Cliff McCormack, Weevil wasn’t alone. If there was a dollar to be made, the Sheriff’s Department happily bent the law for the highest bidder.
“Close the door, please, Ms. Mars.” Petra Landros gestured for her to come in. Veronica shut the door and sat down at a second chair across from Lamb. His eyes tracked her closely. She kept her movements casual, almost dismissive, but she felt the tension in her arms and legs, like bent springs poised to snap.
Petra turned to look at Lamb. “The Chamber of Commerce has decided to hire Ms. Mars to work the Hayley Dewalt case. I’d like for you to catch her up on any details you have so she can get started.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” An ugly flush swept through his cheeks. “Ms. Landros, there’s no need—”
“I’ve already made up my mind on this, Lamb.” Petra’s face was cool, her voice firm. Her smile widened slightly. “Come on, Dan. With the upcoming election, don’t you think you’ve got your hands full enough already? The Chamber is invested in another Lamb administration in the Sheriff’s Department. We need you to focus on doing what you do best—keeping the town clean and the riffraff off the streets.”
The subtext was so obvious even Lamb couldn’t miss it. If you want to keep your funding and your endorsement, you’ll play nice. Veronica wished she had a camera to capture the particular shade of violet Lamb’s cheeks were turning.
His eyes flashed toward Veronica with unadulterated loathing, his mouth twisting wildly as if he was fighting to keep it shut. After a long moment, he grabbed a thin manila file folder and thrust it across the desk at her.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Lamb said as she opened the file. “You’re here to assist in an investigation. Not to run it. You’re in my house now, Mars. I set the rules.”
She flipped through the folder. There was nothing other than the initial missing person’s report filed by Hayley’s friends two days after the party. No notes, no transcripts, no records.
She looked up with a raised eyebrow. “This is it? Is one of your rules to not interview people?”
Lamb gave her a condescending sneer. “What else do you want, a Family Circus–style map retracing her steps? We took her friends’ statement and logged it in the system. There wasn’t anything else to do. There’s absolutely no evidence that anyone took Hayley anywhere against her will. If there were, we would have followed it.”
“Did you check out the house she disappeared from?”
Lamb flicked his hair back. “First of all, just because that was the last place her friends saw her doesn’t mean she disappeared from that house.”
She stared at him incredulously. “So your argument for not checking the last place she was seen is that it’s just the last place she was seen? Nice. Very thorough.”
Something flitted across Lamb’s face and was gone. Then he shrugged. “My people are already spread thin. I’ve got most of my guys down by the boardwalks making sure kids don’t drown in their own puke. We don’t have the manpower to look under rocks for drunken sorority girls.”
Veronica gave him a withering look but didn’t say anything. She could ask for more—for the rental agreement for the house where Hayley went missing, for information on the owners, for the deed—but it’d be just as easy for Mac to access that. Not to mention faster, and one less time she’d have to talk to Lamb. All kinds of wins.
“Anything else we need to discuss?” she asked, looking at Petra. The hotelier was already on her feet, threading her arm through her purse strap.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I realize you don’t have much to work with. Please call my office if you need anything at all—my assistant has been instructed to put you right through.” She gave Lamb an icy smile. “I want Hayley Dewalt found, Lamb, and I expect you to assist Ms. Mars in any way she requires.” With that, she strode out the door.
Lamb looked up at Veronica, the color fading from his cheeks, his eyes narrowed to slits. She looked back at him steadily, unflinching, waiting for him to speak first. Watching the sheriff take his medicine from Landros had been fun—but she knew a humiliated Lamb was a dangerous Lamb.
After a long moment, he leaned back in his chair again, but this time without his former swollen smugness. He jabbed his index finger toward her. “I want to hear everything you find out. You don’t take a fucking step without reporting it to me, you understand?”
“So, the work is beneath you … until you want to take credit for it. Is that it?” Veronica shot him a contemptuous look and stood up. “Look for me under a rock if you’re curious. I’ll let you know when I find Hayley Dewalt.” And with that, she slammed his office door and left the station.
CHAPTER SIX
The number on the scrap of paper Margie Dewalt had thrust at Veronica turned out to belong to a girl named Bri Lafond, one of the three girlfriends who’d taken the bus down with Hayley from Berkeley. Veronica called her from the courthouse parking lot to ask if she could meet that evening. The eager, anxious voice on the other end told her that one of them—Leah Hart—had been taken home by her parents the week before. “She was really upset,” she said. “But Melanie and I are still here. We’ll tell you anything we can.”
They were staying in the Camelot Motel. The sun-bleached building was surrounded by pawn shops, storefront churches, and bars so divey even the spring breakers didn’t bother—which meant it was one of the only places the girls could afford after their spring break reservations ran out. Veronica had spent more caffeine-fueled nights outside the motel than she liked to recall—it was a favorite for the kind of trysts that resulted in shattered prenups, messy divorces, and broken hearts. Read: a home away from home for an enterprising young PI.
At just after seven, she knocked on the door to their room. From the other side of the blinds she saw the reddish glow of a table lamp.
The girl who answered the door was short and muscular and luridly sunburned. Her strawberry blond hair hung in an uncombed tangle around her face, and a small silver stud winked from one nostril. She peered out around the edge of the door with startled woodland eyes.
“Hi,” Veronica said gently. “I’m Veronica Mars. Are you Bri?”
The girl hesitated, as if she had to think about her answer, then nodded. “Hi. Yeah. Come on in.”
Veronica stepped into the drab, cramped little room. Two full-size beds were shoved against opposite walls, the faded floral coverlets made from the same material as the curtains. The décor w
as thrift shop Americana: a painting of ducks taking flight from a lake hung adjacent to one of a small cabin releasing puffs of smoke into a wintery sky. Clothes covered the floor, and an unwashed, sweaty odor mingled with the smell of old takeout.
A second girl sat on the far bed, but she stood up when she saw Veronica. Her long dark hair was looped through the hole in the back of a beat-up Dodgers cap. She wore a hoodie and a pair of denim cutoffs, but her curves were obvious even under the baggy clothing.
“Hi. I’m Melanie.” Her voice was husky but even. She held out a hand for Veronica to shake. She glanced around the room, then gestured wryly to the bed. “Sorry we don’t have a chair to offer you.”
“No problem.” Veronica sat down on the edge of the bed. Bri locked the door and leaned against the chipboard dresser. She chewed on the corner of a fingernail. Melanie sat cross-legged on the other bed, leaning toward Veronica, an intense, focused look on her face. Both girls were a stark contrast to the bright, careless spring breakers on the beaches—they looked ragged edged and tired, more like kids who’d just finished finals than like kids at the end of a vacation.
“So you guys stayed in town to help with the search?” Veronica flipped her notebook to a fresh page and jotted down the date and their names.
They both nodded. Melanie twirled a lock of brown hair around a finger, coiling it so tight the tip of her finger was bone white. “Yeah. We’ve been handing out flyers at the boardwalk.” She took a piece of green paper from a stack on the nightstand and held it up. Hayley’s senior portrait beamed out from it.
“No one even cares, though.” Bri’s voice was so soft Veronica had to strain to hear it. Her lower lip trembled a little. “We hand them out to people and they take them. Then they just crumple them up and throw them on the ground a few feet away. No one cares that she’s missing.”
The words swiped at Veronica, and she flinched. She suddenly realized that this was Bri Lafond’s first lesson that people sucked. Veronica remembered that letdown, the way the world suddenly seemed stripped of bright colors, your beliefs toppled like dominoes. She’d learned it when she was sixteen, after Lilly was murdered and Keith, sniffing out the cover-up but not the truth, had gone after Lilly Kane’s rich, handsome father. Keith was recalled as sheriff, and suddenly she’d found herself not only friendless but a pariah. Her friends circled their wagons around the Kane family, and Veronica spent the better part of the year scraping spray-painted expletives off her locker and replacing her slashed tires. And for a while, no one had raised a finger to stand up for her.
That had changed, of course. She’d made peace with some of her old friends—Duncan. Meg. Logan. And she’d found new, fierce ones in Wallace, Mac, and Weevil. She’d come out of it stronger, smarter.
But that didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt.
“Do you think Hayley’s okay?” Melanie asked, bringing her back to the messy little room.
“I don’t know.” Veronica took a deep breath. “The last thing I want is to give anyone false hope. I’m going to do everything I can to find your friend, but I need your help. Can you walk me through the last night you were with her?”
The girls glanced at each other, and then Melanie spoke.
“I was on a sailing trip with a bunch of other Berkeley kids, but we got a text from Hayley at seven that she’d heard about some party up the coast. We all met up at the motel—we were at the Sea Nymph last week, closer to the beach—and got ready together. It was a black-and-white party, so you had to wear—”
“Black or white to get in.” Veronica nodded. “Sure. Somewhere Truman Capote is spinning in his grave.”
“Who?” Bri cocked her head like a curious spaniel.
Veronica shook her head. “Never mind. Where were you that afternoon, Bri?”
She bit her lip. “Me and Hayley and Leah lay out on the beach for a while, but Hayley got bored and told us she wanted to wander around. We weren’t in the mood, so she went off on her own. A few hours later she texted us about the party.”
“How’d she seem that night while you guys were getting ready?”
“She was fine,” Melanie said, picking at the pilled fabric of the bedspread beneath her. “Normal. She told us some guy had invited her and said she could bring as many girls as she wanted if they were as cute as her.” She rolled her eyes. “She always eats lines like that up.”
“Did she say anything else about this guy? Did you bump into him at the party?”
Again, that subtle exchanged glance.
“She didn’t say anything else about him. And the party was kind of … crazy. If Hayley bumped into him, we didn’t see it. We were sort of out of it.” Bri took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Okay. Let’s talk about the party.” Veronica looked down at her notebook, where she’d jotted the address from the police report. “The address you gave the police was 2201 Manzanita Drive. Is that right?”
“Yeah,” Melanie said. “It’s a huge place, right down on the beach. A mansion. We showed up around ten. They had security guards at the gate doing pat downs and bag searches—it was kind of intense.”
Veronica frowned. Plenty of Neptune’s wealthier families had security precautions—cameras, alarms, the works—and it made sense for someone planning a Gatsby-esque blowout involving crowds of unknown people to hire some extra guards. But what kind of person required a pat down for a party?
“Did you meet the host?” Veronica asked.
“Well, no one ever came up to us and introduced themselves.” Melanie shook her head. “It wasn’t that kind of party. The place was packed. I mean, there were bartenders and waiters going around with drinks, and more security guards inside, but no one who was, like, obviously in charge or anything.”
“From what we heard, there’s a party at the house every night during spring break,” Bri said. “A couple kids we talked to had been a few times already.”
“Okay. So what did you do once you got there?”
“We … I mean, we partied.” Melanie’s eyes, so eager and so intense just a moment ago, darted away toward the window. “I danced for a while. There was a bonfire on the beach. I played a little pool. You know. Party stuff.”
Veronica glanced from one to the other, then set down her notebook on her thigh. “Okay, I get that some of the ‘party stuff’ might not be the kind of thing you want to write Grandma about. But the more I know about what happened that night, the better my chances of finding Hayley. I promise, I’m not here to bust you. I just want to help your friend.”
Bri’s cheeks were an even deeper pink than before, clashing horribly with her hair. She stared at the ground, eyelashes drooping with shame. But Melanie turned her gaze suddenly and firmly back to Veronica. She was blushing too, but her expression was steady, determined.
“Look,” she said. “The thing is, neither one of us remembers a whole lot about that night. We were both pretty wasted. We don’t even remember how the hell we got home. And before you tell us it was stupid and selfish to get that fucked up, trust us. We already fucking know.”
“Sheriff Lamb didn’t believe that Hayley was missing,” Bri said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “We thought if we admitted we were drunk and high it’d be worse.”
Veronica crossed her legs. “Okay. Why don’t we focus on what you do remember. What was Hayley like that night? Was she as drunk as you guys were? Was she talking to anyone specific?”
Bri grabbed a rhinestone-encrusted iPhone from the top of the dresser and started swiping her thumb over the screen. After a moment, she held the phone out to Veronica.
“She spent a lot of time with this guy,” she said.
The picture on the phone was of a buxom, scantily clad brunette draped across a boy’s lap—a far cry from the clean-cut photo of Hayley on the missing person flyers.
Veronica held it up to see it more clearly. Hayley was in a short white dress with a plunging neckline, one spaghetti strap sliding down her shoulder. Her eyes were heavil
y made up, making her look older than she had in her senior portrait, and a delicate pendant in the shape of a birdcage hung in the shadow of her cleavage. She looked up at the boy through heavy lashes, a small, sensual smile turning up the corners of her lips.
The boy was college age, dark haired, his posture the image of casual grace. His angular, sculpted face ended in a gently cleft chin, a lazy smile hovering around his mouth. One hand rested lightly on Hayley’s hip, and he watched her with undisguised hunger.
“You get a name?” Veronica looked up at Hayley’s friends. Both of them shook their heads.
“No. But Hayley spent the whole night all over him. There are more pictures,” Bri said.
Veronica scrolled through. One showed the two of them pressed tight together on the dance floor, Hayley’s legs between the unknown boy’s. Another showed her whispering in his ear, one hand on his chest.
“You took these?” she asked Bri. Bri’s already pink cheeks darkened.
“She asked me to,” she said, shrugging. “I took them with her phone, actually. You’re looking at her Facebook page. She put them up that night.” Bri fidgeted with a gold bangle bracelet at her wrist. “I mean, she seemed to be having a really good time. We were happy she was on the rebound.”
“On the rebound?”
“Yeah,” Melanie broke in. “She and her boyfriend, Chad, broke up the week before spring break. She almost didn’t come with us. She’d been in her room crying her eyes out for a couple days.”
Veronica sat up a little straighter, the words jabbing sharp and sudden into her brain. “Why’d they break up?”
“They got in a huge fight over the phone when she told him she was coming to Neptune for spring break,” Melanie explained. “He goes to Stanford and his spring break is two weeks past ours—he didn’t want her running off to Neptune unsupervised. Whatever, they’ve broken up about five times this year. We were all hoping it’d take this time, but none of us had much faith.”